Comments on: What are some awesome free fonts?

Question: What are some awesome free fonts?

Hildago — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 22:53:24 -0800

I'd like a free font (note: has to be awesome).

I'm getting very, very tired of Times New Roman, and Book Antiqua isn't really doing it for me. I was wondering if anybody had a favorite free alternative font? It would have to be a nice, pleasant-looking serif font for Windows that wasn't too dissimilar to the above, at least not so different that my professors will just tell me to change it back.

I've done some searching on the internet and the askmetafilter archives (which have a surprising number of font questions), but haven't found anything. Mostly, the internet is full of very nice fonts that cost $20, or bogus font-porn sites with popup ads. There must be something out there, though -- I just want to give my documents a little different feel. Links appreciated!

By: tomorama

tomorama — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:16:23 -0800

I use Verdana for everything I do. It comes with Windows.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:27:16 -0800

Some free variant of palatino? I end up running off most of my research papers in palatino by default, but that's in the LaTeX world.

By: kickingtheground

kickingtheground — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:28:18 -0800

Truth be told: making a font that's good for setting large amounts of legible small text is exceedingly hard - which is why decent free fonts for that purpose are so rare. A quick search brought up only PetitLatin as being at all promising.

Have you tried Georgia (probably already on your computer)?

By: Ogre Lawless

Ogre Lawless — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:32:02 -0800

"Arial kicks ass."

Okay, no, really. Windows-standard Georgia is pretty nice looking on the printed page. Palatino is availble on the ol' Linux boxen and is similarly not too ugly. There is something to be said for having "your font" available globally (even if it is somewhat Cheesy).

By: Danelope

Danelope — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:36:55 -0800

If you keep running into commercial fonts that you like, but are only interested in free ones, check out Lookalike Fonts for potential substitutions. Some (if not many) of the suggested replacement fonts may be freely accessible on the Web.

In addition, here is a site with thousands of (supposedly) free fonts, though they don't offer thumbnails. You could simply download a batch and then view them without first installing them using The Font Thing.

Unfortunately, none of the ones I was going to suggest (Calisto MT from Monotype, Minion from Adobe) seem to have free variants. Good luck.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:00:19 -0800

I like garamond which isn't free but came with my computer (either with win2k or office); you might check to see if you have it. (also googling can probably turn up a copy or at least a lookalike).

By: Katemonkey

Katemonkey — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:06:22 -0800

daFont might have something... It's generally where I go for free fonts.

By: theora55

theora55 — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 05:20:18 -0800

Katemonkey, daFont is daBomb. thanks.

By: raaka

raaka — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 06:02:56 -0800

Some people made type just for you. Lido.

By: MsVader

MsVader — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 06:09:53 -0800

You can find tons of crazy fonts here.

By: rhyax

rhyax — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 06:26:11 -0800

palatino also comes on macs.

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 07:02:57 -0800

I'm a big fan of garamond which, as juv3nal pointed out, you may already have.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 08:40:19 -0800

Georgia, Verdana, and Trebuchet are all fine typefaces, but are designed for screen use, not paper use. At high resolution and normal sizes, there are better faces available.

One of my favourites is Korrina.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 10:00:13 -0800

Thanks guys.

By: taz

taz — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:05:27 -0800

I'm late! I'm late! But check this out. S'cool.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 18:45:42 -0800

Taz, you are right, that is cool.

By: BigCalm

BigCalm — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 06:12:43 -0800

For an alternate sans-serif font, I've always liked Bookman old style, but it's not to everyone's taste.